The last couple of photos here are new and the last two show how I made the large ones. I turned the piece and finished the flare(edge), then parted it off and remounted it on a scrap piece as a jam fit, then used hot glue to secure and finished the other side.

I made this cradle for a great friend of mine. This is his first child. I got the plans from another friend who bought the plans and build a similar cradle. I really used the plans as a guideline for function, but I made all of the curves and spindles on my own. I really wanted to carve their initial either into the cradle or as an applicay, but the baby came a little early and I was luck to get three coats of finish on it. It is made from maple and 1/2” birch ply for the bottom. I bought the swing hardware from Rockler for about $10. I honestly don’t remember what I used for the finish, but there was no stain. All of the spindles were turned on my lathe, the tricky part was that they were several sizes of spindles because of the curved top rail and trying to make sure that the middle detail lined up on each. No picture of it, but I added the quarter from the year it was made on the bottom.

This is an end table I built for our son’s babysitter. The plan was from Wood magazine. My wife looked through several issues and marked all the end tables and the sitter picked this one out. I got the wood from a co-worker who had some cherry left over from some other projects and didn’t like working with it, so he gave it to me. It was my first experience with cherry, overall it was good. The one problem I had was getting the drawer to align just right, but maybe only noticeable to me or other people with experience. I tried to match the color to her other furniture. I mixed a couple of stains and then finished with a couple of coats of satin poly.

This is a sign that I made, I think it was cypress. It was for a lady that did shows at her home for rustic home furnishings. I would call them shabby sheik. Anyway, I went through several iterations of the design and this is what I came up with that she liked. I used the computer to make the design, then printed a copy and used a projector to trace it to the wood. I started using a quarter from the current year on my larger projects next to my signiture. I used an ebony stain on the lettering and black parts, then a couple of coats of an outdoor sealant. The sign is mounted on a couple of iron rods that go in the ground.

I made these pens for a good friend of mine and his wife when they got married. I didn’t make the box, but I did have their first names and last initial laser engraved on it. The red pen with the silver filigree was for their sign in book and was made of a resin blank. The others were gifts to some of their family and wedding participants made from cocobolo. The close-up is of the top of the box top engraving. The “G” is very subtle, but I think it turned out great.

This was my very first attempt at designing and building piece of furniture(I don’t really count high school shop, that stuff was years earlier). It was actually the first piece of furniture that I made with or without a design. My wife and I saw this table while on a trip to NYC in Sept. of 2002. I had taken some vacation during the holidays and this is what I made. I wish I still had the photo I took of the original table in the store (I’m sure they wouldn’t have liked me to take it in the first place). I don’t feel so bad for stealing the design, mainly because I only used it for myself and not to make any money from. Anyway, the construction is loose mortise and tennon joinery. The only metal in the whole thing are the screws for the hinges. This was also my first attempt at using a lathe, at the time I didn’t have one so I used a friends. I patterned the legs from some existing furniture that we had only a different scale. I don’t have a picture of it with finish, but I used several coats of tung oi. We set a lot of drinks on this table and so far no rings, just a good wiping down usually cleans it up well. I think the only tools I used were a table saw, drill, lathe and lots of scraping and sanding.

A friend of mine got this bandsaw while stationed in Hawaii. When he moved back to the states, it sat on a ship for a couple of weeks at sea and most likely where it rusted, but I have a feeling it was in bad shape before that. Anyway, he loaned it to me indefinitely, so I thought while I was going to be using it I would fix it up a bit. Before I saw it, I knew the table would need some work, but I had no clue what kind of shape it was in.

At the first look, it appeared to be in okay shape, nothing obviously broken or missing. It is a Rockwell 14” floor model, and I think it was made in 1977. The model # is 28-200. There is what appears to be a date code in the cast iron, 11-30-77. I did a little research on it, since I had basically no knowledge of band saws, and tried to find some users manuals or something on it.

After disassembling the whole thing, except the riser, I laid out all the pieces and got to work. I first cleaned all the parts with a dry cloth then used Boeshield’s Rust Free to get the top clean. I also used one of those sanding blocks that is solid sanding material. Hard to explain, but I bought it at Woodcraft, worked great as you can see. The top was in the worst condition. I used a product from Boeshield called Rust Free to remove the rust. It is non-Toxic and biodegradeable. I also used T-9 for lubrication and protection on the bare metal parts and also a blade cleaner from Boeshield. The paint was Rust-Oleum Gloss Protective Enamel. I cleaned up the small parts like the knobs and bolt threads with a wire wheel and some good ole elbow grease. I even went so far as to repaint the letters on the Start/Stop switches. And that was the only piece I had to replace was a screw that held that switch to the base.

All in all, this was a fun project since I really didn’t know much in detail about tuning or adjusting a bandsaw. Well, I sure had to learn when I put it all back together. It works well, but I have a hard time with curves, not sure if the tension is not right or if the guide blocks are not adjusted correctly, but in any case it has worked well for a couple of years now.